Australia|Australia’s New Offer to Refugees: A Different Detention Center

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Australia’s New Offer to Refugees: A Different Detention Center

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A demonstration in Sydney in August called for an end to the detention of refugees in Australia’s offshore centers, including on Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea.CreditCreditDavid Gray/Reuters

By Adam Baidawi

Oct. 10, 2017

MELBOURNE, Australia — Refugees in one of Australia’s offshore detention centers who hope to be resettled in the United States have been offered another kind of resettlement — to a different offshore detention center.

On Tuesday night, the authorities in the Manus detention center posted a notice offering refugees voluntary relocation to another Australian offshore processing facility on Nauru, an island nation to the east. The Australian government has said that the Manus center will close by Oct. 31.

The question of where to place the refugees, all of whom are men, has been contentious. The Australian government had previously planned to transfer the men to the East Lorengau transit center, elsewhere on Manus Island. Refugees have insisted that East Lorengau was unsafe and that refugees there have been robbed and attacked with machetes.

The Australian government confirmed the transfer offer early Wednesday. “The government of Nauru has agreed to receive P.N.G.-determined refugees in Nauru to await third-country resettlement,” a Department of Immigration and Border Protection spokeswoman said in an email. “Relocation is voluntary; no one will be forced to move to Nauru.” But the only apparent option was East Lorengau.

Refugee advocates say the offer only keeps the men in limbo.

“They’re just scrambling to find another option for them. In this case it’s presenting what’s seen as a voluntary transfer from one broken processing system to another,” said Jana Favero, director of advocacy and campaigns at the Asylum Seeker Resource Center near Melbourne.

A notice posted at the center said those taking up the offer could continue their American resettlement applications on Nauru, or choose to stay there for up to 20 years.

But one of the refugees on Manus, Amir Taghinia, said that there was confusion about what the offer might mean for the men hoping to be granted asylum in the United States. Mr. Taghinia, who fled Iran five years ago, added that many refugees feared that “transferring from one prison to another prison” made their chances of getting to the United States more remote.

He said that he had been interviewed by the American Department of Homeland Security and had started his resettlement application.

Asylum seekers who attempted to reach Australia by boat have been sent to the offshore detention centers while their refugee claims were considered. The United Nations and other bodies have repeatedly condemned the program, citing the conditions of the centers.

The government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull struck a deal with the Obama administration to have the refugees considered for resettlement in the United States. The Trump administration strongly criticized the agreement, but did allow the resettlement of the 54 refugees.

“We do not know what is our sentence,” Mr. Taghinia said. “We do not know how many more years we will have to be kept hostage in here.”